A Perfect Gentleman (12 page)

“You say you control your sister's dowry, but could not a desperate man force your hand?”

“You mean force Isabelle to the altar? I do not think so. I taught my sister how to discourage importunate suitors, and how to defend herself against those like the baron who might become, ah, amorous.”

“You taught her from experience, I take it?”

“To my regret. I was Baron Strickland's first choice of bride, naturally, being older and less well protected than Isabelle.”

Stony was going to get to practice his boxing skills today after all, on Strickland's face! “But you avoided his efforts. Since your sister is not now Lady Strickland, nor betrothed to be, we must assume she did too. So what then?”

“Then nothing.”

“Damn. I beg your pardon.”

“No apologies necessary. That is my sentiment exactly. Damn.”

Chapter Nine

Stony could not sit still any longer. He got up and started to pace around the bench. “My word, what a coil. Did you not hear from your aunt?”

“The next letter I received from London came a month ago, from Aunt Augusta's solicitor, notifying me of her death. Her remains were being taken to Chansford Fold in Yorkshire, he wrote, so that she might find her final resting place beside her parents. He was kind enough to enclose a copy of my aunt's will.”

“And your sister?”

“She was mentioned in the will, of course, but not in the solicitor's message. I expected her home in a matter of days, or a letter telling me she had been invited to a friend's home. I did get one letter, forwarded to me here in London from home: It was so spotted and smeared, I could not read it. She knew she could not stay on in Sloane Street with no one but servants as chaperones. When I did not hear more, I thought the mail must have gone astray, that she was enjoying herself at a house party somewhere. I even wondered if her sense of duty had forced her to accompany our aunt's remains to the Marquess of Chaston's seat.”

“Would you have gone?”

“To a family who never acknowledged my mother's marriage? Who did not bother to send condolences on her death? To an uncle who did not wonder at his own nieces' welfare when they were left orphans? No, I would not have traveled to Yorkshire. I did send a messenger.”

“While you came to London.” Stony's mind was coursing ahead like a hound on a scent, seeking answers. “What did the servants say?”

“Aunt Augusta's dresser had, indeed, accompanied her body to Yorkshire, where her own family resides. The housekeeper had taken her pension and Aunt's silver candlesticks, and emigrated to Canada. The maidservants left for other positions, heaven knows where. And Timms…well, he was not much help.”

“Surely he knew who called, where the ladies visited, which gentleman was to be refused entry.”

“He should have, but he was letting the maids act as butler while he spent most of his days in the wine cellar.”

“Not at church?”

“Oh, no, that is a much more recent calling, since losing my aunt.” And losing his pension, but Ellianne saw no need to mention dear Timmy's fatal flaw. “Her death was devastating to him. They had been together for over forty years, you see. He suffered a crisis of the nerves.”

“And found religion?”

“No, that was not until I promised to restore his pension if he stopped drinking and gambling.” So much for protecting the old man's pride. Ellianne was still angry that he could not name Isabelle's beau. “He remembers nothing, except that Aunt Augusta and my sister were shouting the last night. My aunt was found dead in the morning by one of the maids, and my sister found missing by another.”

“With her clothes?”

“Some of them, what could fit in two valises and a hatbox. Her jewels. So Isabelle did not rush out in a panicked frenzy.” Ellianne looked over at him, where he had stopped pacing to lean against the bench. “She did not kill our aunt. I doubt Isabelle knew Aunt Augusta was dead when she left.”

“The magistrate was satisfied?”

“Aunt's solicitor was thorough—and generous.”

Stony started pacing again. “Very well. Your aunt is dead, the butler lost his memory in a bottle, the servants are scattered, and your sister is still missing. Bow Street cannot find her. What does Strickland say?”

“He refuses to say anything. He does not answer my messages, and when I called at his house—”

Stony stopped dead in his tracks, turning to face her. He disordered his fair curls even more by running his fingers through them. “You called at his house? The man who might have caused your sister's disappearance? Who wanted his estate restored, by means fair or foul? Even if he were a model of decorum, which I assure you the baron is not, no respectable woman calls on a bachelor household. Here I was thinking you a sensible female with legitimate reasons for your erratic behavior.”

“My what?” she asked with a gasp. “I will have you know my actions at all times are well reasoned and respectable. I did not go to Strickland's house unaccompanied, nor unprotected.”

She patted the large reticule that dangled by strings off her wrist. All Stony could hear was the rustling of paper. She thought to defend herself against an aging rake with what, a sermon? Or was she thinking to reform Strickland with religion, like the butler? The day prayers kept a man from visiting prostitutes, every wife in London would be on her knees. Or not.

The hundred pounds that now rested in Stony's pocket was suddenly not nearly enough pay for the
headaches this female was going to cause him. He counted to ten. Twice. “All right. You went to Strickland's home and…?”

“And he fled out the back door. The next time, yesterday, the house was shut up. He has flown like a thief in the night.”

“Someone at the clubs will know where he's landed.”

“That was exactly my thinking,” Ellianne said with a smug tone to her voice, “which is why I decided to engage your services after all. I cannot enter the gentlemen's preserves on my own. Nor can I introduce myself to the young ladies who might have conversed with Isabelle at balls and such. You know, at supper, or in the ladies' retiring rooms, or between dances. Girls are prone to chatter, so one of them might recall something of use.”

Stony well knew how young females prated on and on about nothing at all. If any one of them could recall a conversation ten minutes later, though, much less over a month ago, he'd be surprised. “I can ask Lady Valentina Pattendale. She had her come-out last year, and attended every function since.”

Ellianne recognized the name from her lists, and from more current news in the
on dits
columns. “Will the lady help without gossiping about Isabelle? I mean to protect my sister's reputation as well as her fortune.”

“I would not trust Lady Valentina with a bent soup spoon, much less a secret, but she does owe me a favor. And all anyone has to know is that Miss Isabelle Kane did indeed go north to help bury her aunt, then to visit friends nearby during a brief mourning period. As you mentioned, she could not stay on in Town unchaperoned, nor could she attend balls so soon after a death in the family, so no one will wonder at her leaving.”

That sounded reasonable to Ellianne, more reasonable than entrusting her sister's good name to a young lady who had made micefeet of her own reputation.

“There are other girls I would like to interview. I made a chart.” She opened the strings of her purse and withdrew a folded square of thick paper. She unfolded it to reveal the project she'd been gluing when Lord Wellstone came to Sloane Street. He leaned over her shoulder while she started to explain it to him. She tried not to be distracted by the closeness of his broad shoulder, or the soap-and-spice male scent of him.

Of course, she had to think about his strength and his smell in order to tell herself not to think about them. “Here, that is there… No, that piece was to cover a hole. This one? Perhaps the cream-colored scrap.”

He took it from her and studied the opened page, filled with newspaper clippings and bits of expensive pressed papers, with arrows and circles connecting the various items, where dried glue had not obscured the markings. He hoped she was better at numbers than at making maps, or whatever the deuced thing was.

With him standing farther away, Ellianne found her wandering wits. “I gathered a stack of invitations from Aunt Augusta's desk, events she might have attended when Isabelle first came to Town. Then I ordered back issues of the various newspapers and cut out any mention of those parties. The papers often mention who attended, who danced with whom, that kind of thing. I was hoping to see my sister's name among them, but the journalists preferred to write about titled ladies, or ones whose conduct was questionable.”

“Scandal sells more newspapers than news does, unfortunately.”

“Yes, but I did manage to gather some names, names that occurred frequently enough that they must have been introduced to my sister at one time or another. You see, here is Lady Valentina's name, but there are others which appear more often. I have listed them on the back,” Ellianne concluded, proud of her handiwork.

Stony studied the notations a moment, turned the page over, then tore it in half, then quarters.

Ellianne jumped to her feet, dropping her reticule, which landed with a heavy thud. She ignored it and reached for the pieces—now eight of them—of her once lovely chart. “Of all the high-handed, rude, obnoxious behavior! Why, you are exactly like those old dodderers at the bank. If something is not their idea, it must not have merit. If this is your notion of assisting me, belittling my efforts and—”

“She was not at any of those events.”

“What?”

“I said, your sister was not at Lady Fanshawe's rout, nor at the Byington girl's betrothal ball. She could not have spoken to your list of young ladies, for she was not among them.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because I was there, and I would have known if Lady Augusta was firing off a niece, or if a new heiress had come to Town. It was my job to know such things, you understand, my livelihood.”

“Oh,” was all Ellianne could think to say.

Stony saw the droop in her slim shoulders. “But it was a good effort on your part,” he said to cheer her up. “Well conceived and, ah, well constructed.”

“But a wasted effort. Now we will never find anyone who spoke to my sister.”

“Nonsense. Of course we will. Lady Valentina might know, and, better still, Gwen will know who Lady Augusta's friends were.”

“Gwen?” Ellianne was not happy that yet another stranger was going to be privy to her family's woes.

“My stepmama. But she is quite young. You'll adore her, everyone does, and she is an invaluable font of information about the beau monde. What she does not know, your aunt's cronies will.”

“Aunt Augusta had no close friends when I was in Town last. She still received invitations, of course, although she rarely reciprocated, but she seldom had morning callers or guests for dinner. She balked at wasting her money at silver loo, and declined to sit on any charitable committees, places where her contemporaries congregated.” Ellianne was still bitter that her aunt had refused to help fund the girls' training school, yet she died a wealthy woman. Like it or not, Aunt Augusta's money was going to add a new wing, Ellianne had decided, with her name on it. If her posthumous generosity annoyed the old miser, she could take it up with the marquess's ancestors. “She said the London ladies of her generation were all emptyheaded ninnies, who spoke of nothing but their grandchildren, their health, and how to spend more of their husbands' money than the husbands could spend on their mistresses.”

“Now there's a problem.” Stony propped one booted foot up on the bench, resting his arm on his knee, thinking out loud. “We need more information. Usually the servants and the grande dames know everything. Featherbrained chits cannot be counted on to recall anything but their next dancing partner.”

Ellianne did not like any of her gender being called featherbrained, but then her sister had gone off without leaving a note. She sighed. “I had another idea, in case the first ones did not work.”

“I am sure you did,” Stony muttered, almost too low for Ellianne to hear.

“Excuse me?”

“I said I am sure you devised a good one.”

Ellianne's brow was furrowed, but she went on to explain: “You see, if Aunt Augusta was trying to promote the match with Strickland”—she grimaced worse—“she might have tried to keep other men away, not making introductions that she should have. Yet I know from my sister's letters that they did go out, that she did make new friends and met one gentleman in particular, before our aunt took ill, that is. That must be why you hadn't heard of my sister's presence, or encountered her at the more popular gatherings. But someone saw her, perhaps without learning her name.”

“That makes sense.”

She tilted her head in acknowledgment of the meager praise. “So we have to prod their memories. I thought perhaps I could attend some quiet functions, not to dance, of course, not while wearing mourning, but to be seen. That is where I need your assistance. Without Aunt Augusta, I have no social connections in London. I know various bankers and investors and other men of business, but they are of no help in this matter. The schoolmates I still consider friends are spread about the countryside, tending their ever-increasing nurseries.” Ellianne kept a stock of silver rattles ready to be engraved. “And I made no lasting relationships in the short time I spent here for my own presentation.” Well, she had made a lasting impression on Lord Strickland.